Donald Trump Jr.'s 'Gas Chamber' Comments Were Completely Out Of Line

Pro tip: If your father's presidential campaign is taking regular criticism for being racist, inflammatory and anti-Semitic, it's probably a smart idea to just avoid talking about anything remotely Holocaust-related. People are really sensitive about genocide jokes. Which is why Donald Trump Jr.'s 'Gas Chamber' reference during a a radio interview this week was completely out of line.

Donald Jr. was talking about how unfair the media has been to his father's campaign when he dropped the controversial comment. "The media has been her number one surrogate in this," he said of Hillary Clinton, during an interview with radio host Chris Stigall in Philadelphia, according to CNN. "Without the media, this wouldn't even be a contest. But the media has built her up. They've let her slide on every indiscrepancy [sic], on every lie, on every DNC game trying to get Bernie Sanders out of the thing."

That's when he was apparently on such a roll, he went ahead and decided to just drop in a little Nazi reference. "I mean, if Republicans were doing that, they'd be warming up the gas chamber right now. It's a very different system — there's nothing fair about it."

Let's just take a moment to be crystal clear. There is nothing remotely comparable between the media vetting a candidate for the most powerful job in the world and the Nazis killing 6 million Jews, many of those in gas chambers.

The Anti-Defamation League was not impressed with Donald Jr.'s comments either, especially given the Trump's campaign's hiring of Steve Bannon, one of the most powerful voices behind the so-called Alt-Right movement, widely regarded at patently anti-Semitic, among other things. As The Daily Beast reported in its coverage of the Alt-Right movement:

The three alt-right leaders who gathered in D.C. this afternoon made two things very clear: They think white people are genetically predisposed to be more moral and intelligent than black people, and they do not want to share their envisioned utopian ethno-state with folks of the Jewish persuasion. There’s some disagreement in the alt-right on what they refer to as “the Jewish question.” But the big take-away was that Jews are suspicious.

Now, the ADL is calling for Donald Trump Jr. to "retract" the statement.

But this isn't the first time the Trump has been called out for anti-Semitism. In July he sent a tweet calling Clinton the "most corrupt candidate ever" showing an image of Clinton, a Star of David, and piles of $100 dollar bills. According to NBC News, the image which was widely condemned by Jewish leaders for invoking negative Jewish stereotypes.

Trump defender the tweet saying the star wasn't a Star of David, but a Sheriff's star.

For his part, Donald Trump Jr. is defending the "gas chamber" comments saying it was in "no way anti-Semitic," Mediate reported.

Whatever the case — whether he meant it or not — perhaps Donald Jr. ought to consider following the ADL's advice and retract his comments, for the good of the campaign.